Oct 3, 2012

Chinese mobile phone maker Huawei has made its dual-core Ascend P1 smartphone official in Taiwan, where it will arrive on shelves starting with October 15th.

The handset is set to land at Chunghwa Telecom and will be released in two different color versions, namely White and Dark Blue. Huawei Ascend P1 was made official in the country with a price tag of 1340 yuan (about $210 USD) attached to it with the signing of a contract agreement, or at $12,990 Taiwan dollars (about $443 USD) unlocked.

In addition to the TI OMAP 4460 1.5GHz dual-core processor complemented by 1GB of RAM, the smartphone also includes 4GB of internal memory, along with a microSD memory card slot and an 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back. The handset runs under Google’s Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

Due to either wanting to get rid of excess memory chip inventories or just to capitalize on the lingering tendency of people to be drawn to large numbers, Gigabyte and Club3D have prepared a pair of new graphics cards with extra-large memory capacities.

We'll talk about Club 3D's creation first, since it is closer to the price that mainstream users are willing to pay for a graphics card. As an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 board, it has a memory interface of 128 bits and a graphics processing unit (GK107, 28nm, 384 CUDA cores) clock frequency of 900 MHz. Speaking of which, the 4 GB RAM are of the DDR3 variety and operate at 1,600 MHz. As for connectivity, Club 3D designed the low profile card (though not single-slot) with dual-link DVI, HDMI and a D-Sub output. Club 3D expects prospective buyers to pay 177 Euro in exchange for the adapter, which corresponds to $177 in the US, even though exchange rates say it should be $228 (conversion rates never reflect the true prices, by region).

The other video board, called Gigabyte GV-N670OC-4GD, is a GeForce GTX 670 OC with 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, rather than 2 GB. The memory interface is of 256 bits, while the GK104 graphics processor functions at 980 MHz base, 1,058 MHz GPU Boost frequencies. The performance is quite a bit higher than the stock levels (915/980 MHz) and owed not only to the WindForce 3X cooler (450W triple-fan / triple-slot), but also to the Ultra Durable Design (special components with higher stability and endurance). Its price is of 439 Euro ($439 – $560), but only pre-orders can be placed at this time. For those seeking the rest of the specs, they are as follows: 1,344 CUDA cores, 3-way SLI support 6,008 MHz memory speed and dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. On that note, multi-GPU setups should be easier to establish than some might expect, now that SLI-capable motherboards tend to have triple-slot spacing between the primary and secondary PCI Express x16 slots.

When made available in the first quarter of the next year, Research In Motion’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system is set to arrive on devices with a nice range of enhancements over current flavors of the mobile platform.

To ensure that developers will get familiar with the new design principles in the platform, and that they will have applications ready for the official availability of the OS, RIM has published a PDF guide that underlines some of the main changes in the OS. Of course, the guide can prove to be great reading for future BlackBerry 10 users as well, since it will offer them info on what to expect from the platform when compared to current OS versions. One of the most appealing features of the new operating system release is the inclusion of gestures to operate devices. These are supported from the bezel itself, as swipes in certain directions will trigger different actions on the smartphone. For example, waking up the device can be done through simply swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

Notifications can be accessed in a similar manner, with a single swipe, regardless of the application users are in (a feature that is not present in the Dev Alpha build of BlackBerry 10). To minimize an application on the phone’s screen users will simply need to flick in an upward motion from within the app itself. Users will be able to raise or lower the onscreen keyboard through gestures as well, and the same applies when it comes to viewing the menu or settings of an app. But this is not all, as the support for gestures is present throughout the BlackBerry 10 OS, so that users can easily scroll, select items in a list, access the BlackBerry Hub and do so much more.

You can have a look at what RIM has to say on the matter via the aforementioned PDF file. Additional details can be found on CrackBerry, which has published a series of videos showcasing some of these gestures.

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has been rumored before to plan the release of a new software to allow users to connect their handsets to desktop PCs, and confirmation on the matter appears to have already emerged.

Called BlackBerry Link, the application is said to have been in internal testing at the handset vendor for quite some time now, and might be finally nearing its official availability. The app was spotted on BlackBerry Dev Alpha devices, yet specific info on what it might bring along lacks for the time being.

At the moment, BlackBerry users interested in syncing files and content on their phones with a desktop PC can take advantage of the BlackBerry Desktop Software / Manager, yet that is expected to change in the not too distant future, especially since the app is seen as rather slow.

Nokia might have killed off all of its plans regarding the MeeGo operating system, but the platform will continue to live, courtesy of the Jolla startup.

The company has already offered info on its plans for the operating system, and even said that it might have handsets launched before the end of the year, and some more details on the matter are now available. According to a recent article on The Wall Street Journal, the company might be ready to launch its first MeeGo-based phones in November.

The platform is open source, which means that other companies could also pick it up and install it on their devices, should they feel it would prove successful. Nokia’s MeeGo-based N9 smartphone enjoyed quite a bit of success when launched, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Jolla’s phones will share a similar fate.

The world could probably go on existing just fine even if overclocking records didn't get beaten every other day, but then professional overclockers wouldn't have anything to do.

We also can't deny that it's a nice badge of valor to have your name next to the highest clock speed ever achieved for the flagship central processing unit of Intel's Core lineup. The Core i7 3770K third-generation CPU (Ivy Bridge) has been driven, by the ASUS ROG team (Republic of Gamers), to 7,184.3 MHz frequency on the Maximus V Extreme motherboard. This beats the previous record (from a few days ago) by almost 50 MHz, which isn't all that much, but also not the smallest difference we've ever seen. We may as well specify that the speed of 7,136 MHz was accomplished using a different mainboard, the Z77 OC Formula. Since we're on the subject, the complete system configuration of the test bench involved in the latest test, in addition to the CPU and Maximus V Extreme motherboard, used G.Skill DDR3 memory, a Kingston SSD and an Antec HCP 1,200W power supply unit.

The names (or rather nicknames) of the overclockers in the gallery below are Andre Yang, TeamRU Slamms and Smoke, Hazzan and Shamino. Their entry has been validated and can be found here. Readers should be careful not to try this at home, unless they really know what they are doing. After all, among overclocking attempts, this was particularly unusual in that it used liquid helium instead of nitrogen. We're sure that the portrayal of helium as a substance that turns inhalers' voices squeaky is at least partially exaggerated in entertainment media, especially when the concentration isn't too high, but we wouldn't want to be in the middle of the thick cloud shown in that photo up there. The lights, not to mention the ceiling, are barely visible through it.

Well-known motherboard manufacturer, Taiwanese company MSI has just announced its new AMD FM2 motherboard supporting the new Trinity APUs and we presented the top-of-the-line FM2-A85XA-G65 here and the more affordable models here.

Not much was known about the MiniITX version, but today the company is officially presenting its smallest Trinity FM2 motherboard. The official name of the new card is MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 and this one features high-quality solid capacitors along with support of a full PCI-Express Gen2 x16 video card with only the case being the limiting factor. The new mainboard features two DDR3 DIMM slots, but it will further allow the user to mount modules rated beyond the 2133 MHz mark with some overclocking help. On the other hand, the maximum memory capacity supported is unfortunately only 16 GB. The chipset used is AMD’s own A75 and this means that USB 3.0 ports are also present and, in this case, we have two of them on the backside I/O panel with another supplementary header on the PCB.

MSI Super Charger technology is available, as well as the four SATA III internal ports along with the back side eSATA connector. Realtek’s RTL8111E takes care of Gigabit LAN connectivity while Bluetooth 3.0+HS is also present through a rear mounted adapter along with the WirelessN module. Connectivity is expanded by four USB 2.0 ports that are on the I/O panel, next to the VGA and HDMI connectors and the classic PS/2 combo port. There is no info on pricing yet, although the motherboard will soon be listed in Germany.